“It is a nice name,” she said. “Did _your_ mother too die in the
convent? I am very happy here, but I shall be happier if you come.”
Lady Sophia had entered softly while she spoke.
“Hush, Patty!” said she, with a smile. “And run away now.”
The child went, looking wistfully back. _Ah, mignonnette, ma petite à
jamais mémorable, toi que j’aime sans discontinuer!_ How wert thou to
me from the first the most attached of little dogs!
Madam drew me into a window, and looked earnestly into my eyes. As she
held me, Father Pope entered and stood near, my morose and baleful
inquisitor.
“Do you like my home?” she said, in her level, toneless voice. The
labour of lifting it seemed always constitutionally beyond her.
I clasped my hands. “O, madam,” I said, “I could be a very good
Catholic here!”
She smiled, in a surprised way, then looked grave. I waited in a fever
of expectation for her to speak again. I had already decided that I
would wish to be adopted like Patience, in whom I seemed to foresee a
little adoring vassal, so welcome after my own long slavery, and that
I must be adroit to gain my point. Brighthelmston, with its
questionable potentialities, had darkened in contrast with this
paradise. I felt even that it would not be good for me to return
there; that I was destined for a virtuous, if not a devout life. It is
no contradiction that I had not thought so an hour before. Our moral
development is intermittent. Its phases of growth are inspirations of
adaptation to circumstance. A fever made of Francis of Assisi a saint
out of a profligate. These high lawns had revealed to me the pit from
which I had escaped.
Lady Sophia looked very sweet and grave.
“Or anywhere, I hope,” she said. “Faith is not a question of
surroundings.”